If I remember correctly, the stated purpose behind affirmative action originally was to make up for a history of discrimination and exclusion. In other words, court-ordered reverse discrimination.

Throughout most of the 1970s and 1980s the big push was on for balancing the employment roster with community norms (race, gender, etc).

I spent most of the 1980s as an investigator for a major state agency, and one of my functions was performing background investigations on applicants for employment, vendors, contractors, etc. I was not the hiring authority, just gather the data and submit to the department heads. Actual hiring results showed me that felony convictions, history of fraud or forgery, falsifying educational credentials, and bald-faced lies meant far less than race, gender, or certain ethnic surnames.

Knew another Vietnam veteran employed by the postal service, pure white boy with very common Anglo name. After being passed over for promotion several times he legally changed his name to an obviously ethnic variation, then was promoted 3 times in 2 years.

Lost track of the number of bogus mail-order college degrees submitted for management positions. I recall that about 70% of applicants lied on applications, and over half of those with criminal histories falsified their applications.

Fingerprinting, national agency record checks, public records, educational history, credit reports, employment history, residence history, adverse civil actions and judgements. Put them all together and compare to the applications, resumes, and security questionnaires, a pattern of lies will usually emerge.

Seldom made any difference when hiring decisions were made; balancing the staff to match state demographics was the prevailing directive.

I work in DoD. Usually, a program manager is an AA. I have resigned to do what is asked of me even if it is not the best way. I believe AA is why it takes so long to field new systems.

Looking good…

“WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court's conservative majority signaled skepticism Monday over the use of race-conscious admissions at American colleges in one of the most controversial cases before the court this year, questioning the boundaries of such policies and whether they are actually needed to ensure diversity. …”

https://www.usatoday.com/story...missions/8200027001/

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
If it is overturned I wonder how they will monitor admissions committees who are some of the most biased people in the world.

In the airline industry, about 30 years ago, there was a court case that led to overt industry wide discrimination against white males.

Discrimination was easily proven by comparing objective qualifications of applicants vs hired. The same would be easy to do in college admissions, and if they continued to discriminate against particular groups they would have to argue that those groups as a whole have bad subjective attributes.

Iow, their position would be flipped. Instead of claiming diversity adds to an applicant's score, they would have to argue that certain races as a whole have deficient attributes.

There isn't a proof problem in the university cases. The colleges do it on purpose and admit to it. It is part of their policy as they are seeking a more diverse student body. To get it, they limit the admission of certain groups - in this case Asians.

And where has 50 years of "affirmative action" AKA legalized discrimination against white males gotten us?

The last job I applied for before starting my own business was for a Senior Engineer to run an R&D section. The hiring notice clearly stated you must be an Electronic Engineer with a minimum of 5 years experience in Engineering positions.

9 people applied. 3 were Engineers, of the three, 1 had over 5 years experience, the other 2 had 1 to 2 years experience but they were Affirmative Action hires.

The remaining 6 who applied? Not one of them was an Engineer, but they were all people who qualified as minorities.

So where we've gotten is we've allowed unqualified incompetents into positions they couldn't possible do and when it was discovered they couldn't do the job, they didn't get fired, the stayed on and got paid to do...nothing at all. As a result, minorities apply for anything and everything they're not qualified for and they get it most of the time.

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:

There isn't a proof problem in the university cases. The colleges do it on purpose and admit to it. It is part of their policy as they are seeking a more diverse student body. To get it, they limit the admission of certain groups - in this case Asians.

Correct, I guess I didn't write my point very well.

It is easy to prove discrimination against a group. There are objective measurements, which in the case of colleges would be things like standardized test scores, class ranking, GPA, hours of community service, 2nd or 3rd language skills, etc. That is how it was done in the airlines, where it was shown that women or minorities were not hired despite having equal subjective qualifications as whites or men who were hired.

So once the Supremes rule, and if in favor of ending AA, the colleges are now in a very vulnerable position if they continue discriminating. The question was posed how would the admissions be monitored, and the answer is it will be simple.

If a college kept admitting one demographic while rejecting another demographic, one would just have to show the objective credentials of the two groups to show disproportionate treatment. The college would have to show that, for example, white applicants had demonstrably lower test scores than non-white applicants. Or that Asians had demonstrably lower GPAs. Assuming such is not the case, it is thus proven the college is discriminating against qualified candidates because of non-relevant characteristics.

The only out for college admissions would be some claim that the subjective characteristics of one demographic is inferior to the others. Not that diversity is good and thus a good subjective attribute for an applicant, but that a person's race, sex, or other attribute is a bad attribute. And that would be fun to watch them try!

Supposedly affirmative action is a nonstarter with many colleges since they are not very selective and admit most anybody.

In contrast Harvard accepts only 4 percent of its applicants, while large state Universities accept upwards of 80 percent.

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:

There isn't a proof problem in the university cases. The colleges do it on purpose and admit to it. It is part of their policy as they are seeking a more diverse student body. To get it, they limit the admission of certain groups - in this case Asians.

Correct, I guess I didn't write my point very well.

It is easy to prove discrimination against a group. There are objective measurements, which in the case of colleges would be things like standardized test scores, class ranking, GPA, hours of community service, 2nd or 3rd language skills, etc. That is how it was done in the airlines, where it was shown that women or minorities were not hired despite having equal subjective qualifications as whites or men who were hired.

So once the Supremes rule, and if in favor of ending AA, the colleges are now in a very vulnerable position if they continue discriminating. The question was posed how would the admissions be monitored, and the answer is it will be simple.

If a college kept admitting one demographic while rejecting another demographic, one would just have to show the objective credentials of the two groups to show disproportionate treatment. The college would have to show that, for example, white applicants had demonstrably lower test scores than non-white applicants. Or that Asians had demonstrably lower GPAs. Assuming such is not the case, it is thus proven the college is discriminating against qualified candidates because of non-relevant characteristics.

The only out for college admissions would be some claim that the subjective characteristics of one demographic is inferior to the others. Not that diversity is good and thus a good subjective attribute for an applicant, but that a person's race, sex, or other attribute is a bad attribute. And that would be fun to watch them try!

I see. The concept is called disparate impact. It is hard to prove discrimination in any one particular instance. So you can sometimes prove that there is a disparate impact as the result of some practice on a group as a whole which substitutes for proving there was discrimination in some particular instance.

In other words, I can't show you didn't hire Bill because he wears a green sweater, but I can show you have no green-sweater employees out of a group of thousands.

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:
The only out for college admissions would be some claim that the subjective characteristics of one demographic is inferior to the others. Not that diversity is good and thus a good subjective attribute for an applicant, but that a person's race, sex, or other attribute is a bad attribute. And that would be fun to watch them try!

The Ivys have come right out and said many Asians rate poorly on the personal rating part of the holistic application. What the schools haven't done a great job of explaining is why Asians (and White males to a lesser extent) overwhelmingly rate lower on their personal ratings compared to Blacks & Hispanics, and why the personal rating is weighted so heavily as to bring down the an applicant's measured scores (test scores, GPA, etc).

A number of years ago, my daughter, at the time as a student at Michigan State University, told me her
friend at MSU lost her scholarship to a black student due to a "grade point adjustment" by the university that resulted in the black student then
surpassing the grade point average of my daughter's
friend.

How's that sound for fairness???

quote:

Originally posted by Michael J. Shannon:
A number of years ago, my daughter, at the time as a student at Michigan State University, told me her
friend at MSU lost her scholarship to a black student due to a "grade point adjustment" by the university that resulted in the black student then
surpassing the grade point average of my daughter's
friend.

How's that sound for fairness???

Just out of college I applied for an Engineering job with the city. The ad said they would do a verbal and a written test. They would weight each one at 50%. They would add your scores on the two together, divide by 2 and whoever had the highest score got the job. Passing score on the written exam was 70%.

I got 99% on the written exam. The next closest score was 60%. They sent the results out and that's how I know. So I called them and said that I obviously had the job as I was the only one that passed. They said no, they had allowed "the woman" who got 60% to pass the test. Then they said they'd changed the weighting on the tests to 90/10 so the written essentially no longer mattered.

I figured okay, I'll get 99% on the verbal and so will she, she's now got her affirmative action taken care of with the passing of the written test and the weighting of the exams.

So we did the verbal, we both got 99% of course, and they sent out a notice that I was #2 on the hiring list, she was #1. I called them and told them their math sucks, she's now at 95.1 and I'm at 99. They said no, because of affirmative action we had to give her 10 more points, but they said they had another opening and I'd be hired in 30 days or so.

I told them to forget it, I was done. They said why and I told them that a few years down the road a promotion would come up, I'd be the one most qualified for it and she'd get it and I'd end up working for an incompetent.

How's that one sound for fairness?

However, Karma got her a year later. I read in the paper where she'd been arrested and perp walked out of the job for embezzling funds.

When you say minority, that isn't correct. What the libs are really saying are blacks and Latinos. Asians don't count as a minority unless it's for votes against the evil round eye white man.

If anything, Asians should be paying close attention to this and realize how many jobs and promotions have gone to less qualified blacks and Latinos because they checked the "right" minority box or have a vagina.

I just read this today, in an article about Rishi Sunak (new PM of UK) in the WSJ:

quote:

For the West, Mr. Sunak marks a more hopeful possibility: a potential broadening of the conservative tent in all major Anglophone democracies. Not that long ago, the Labour Party had a virtual lock on nonwhite voters in Britain. But a 2021 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report by Milan Vaishnav and colleagues found that about 3 in 10 British-Indian voters support the Conservative Party while 4 in 10 support Labour. (Subcontinental voters of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin still overwhelmingly prefer Labour.) Outside Britain, left-wing parties remain dominant. Mr. Vaishnav’s research shows that 15% of Indians in the U.S., 19% in Canada and 26% in Australia prefer conservative parties.

Link

That's disappointing. I think Americans of Chinese and Japanese descent largely trend Democrat also; but I thought it would have been different from those with families from India.

I once applied for a government job, some automated scoring system rated my resume 85.

I received an email saying they were only interviewing candidates with minimum scores of 110 or higher.

So you needed at least two or three preference check boxes to get interviewed.

I did not apply again for many years.

I don't think too much about poll number for SCOTUS decisions. They don't change anything. The vast majority of Americans couldn't tell you anything about the 10th Amendment or why Roe vs. Wade was overturned. That's all you need to know.

Article by Renu Mukherjee, a policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute.

“Justice Clarence Thomas voiced what we're all thinking.

What IS diversity, anyway?

Some of America's elite universities claim to know, as they defend the use of affirmative action in college admissions. But the dishonesty at the heart of their view is painfully obvious.

Their pitifully narrow understanding of diversity has damaged America.

'I've heard the word diversity quite a few times and I don't have a clue what it means,' Thomas said during oral arguments in the Supreme Court on Monday.

'Give us a specific definition of diversity…' he asked Ryan Park, the solicitor representing the University of North Carolina, alongside Harvard University, in their defense of race-conscious admissions programs.

It was a pointed question. Apparently, Park didn't see it coming.

'Racially diverse groups of people . . . perform at a higher level,' Park responded. [a slogan, not an answer]

'The mechanism there,' he continued, 'is that it reduces groupthink and that people have longer and more sustained disagreement, and that leads to a more efficient outcome.'

Thomas' next cut went deep.

'I guess I don't put too much stock in that,' he replied, 'I've heard similar arguments in favor of segregation, too.' …”

DailyMail article:
https://mol.im/a/11379369